Current Mood: rushed

Entry tags:

AI Shit

It occured to me that I started undersleeping when I started bringing the blood glucose sensor reader into the bedroom with me. So I left it in the kitchen last night. Thinking I'd been mistaken about the cornstarch being the cause, I had corstarch again last night. I didn't sleep all night. So cornstarch really is an issue, and probably the reader is too. So I won't be exposing myself to either at bedtime.

It's after dinner and, as usual, I'm tired as hell. I think I might avoid this feeling if only I could skip dinner. I tried taking the cornstarch during my midday snack so that I could avoid whatever blood sugar problems I might be having in the evening, but I didn't take enough apparently. Tomorrow I will try half a cup.

I'm depressed, I have disturbing memories stored in my body. My chest feels like it's being dragged down towards my belly.

I tried to actually do something with my email provider's new AI assistant today. It kept info-dumping me; the session was painful. I asked it how to alter the UI and it kept giving me incorrect information. I asked it why, and it said that it hadn't been update since sometime in spring of 2024.

Some parents are suing OpenAI because their son committed suicide after conferring at length with the company's AI bot on the topic of suicide:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/27/chatgpt-scrutiny-family-teen-killed-himself-sue-open-ai

Ridiculous. The suicide is not Open AI's fault. The parents should have known more about their own child's psychological state. I think there is a very good chance that Open AI will lose, however, because I see a pattern emerging of society blaming tech companies for human behavior. It's like all the people blaming political partisanship on social media. Neither the tech companies nor their software control how people think. Everyone has the power to disagree, to log off, delete accounts, shut down computers. And parents are responsible for their children's use of technology.

It is of course not easy to control a teenager's use of computers. But one easy thing parents can do is to not buy their kids mobile phones. If phone contact is necessary, dumb phones can be used. School districts are now going to absurd lengths to prevent mobile phone use from interferring with classes, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for magnetic pouches for kids to deposit phones into for the school day. The parents shouldn't be sending the kids in with mobile phones anyhow. I wonder how many of these schools have tried communicating this to parents. I wouldn't be surprised that the parents resisted actually parenting in this particular domain.

Delusional shit is breaking out over AI:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/aug/26/can-ais-suffer-big-tech-and-users-grapple-with-one-of-most-unsettling-questions-of-our-times

Most people don't give a shit about whether non-human animals suffer, but this nonsense is now in the news. Sheer stupidity.

Wednesday @ 7:22 am

"Apple Intelligence. Personal, private, powerful."

Scrolling past this quickly and reading it as “personal, private, perfect” . . . IYKYK.

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Entry tags:

newsphobia

Faded lady.

We kept getting fed the same bullshit, and it’s being laundered in the same kind of stories. [The New York Times] sucks, man. It doesn’t suck because it posted something dumb that betrays the paper’s poor commitment to video gaming’s wider place in our culture and artistic landscape. It sucks because it’s doing to games, and AI, what it seems to be doing to every other important beat of the 2020s: taking the worst people at face value.

On gray journalism.

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Current Mood: tired

Entry tags:

Food and Commutes in the California Bay Area

So I spent my late morning and lunchtime reading this longish discussion comparing the San Francisco Bay Area (where I live) to NYC:

https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/1ng6t8j/would_i_regret_moving_to_the_bay_area_nyc_local/

I'm interested in these kinds of discussions because I get to see a large number of perspectives on a variety of aspects of this area.

But some topics that come up over and over again, I don't quite understand them and they annoy me. One of them is the insane focus on food/eating out. I'm sure there are people who eat out every single day, but I guess I just sub-consciously assumed that they were an extreme minority. Some of the people in these discussions talk about patronizing restaurants as if they eat out damn near every other day. The quality of nearby restaurants seems super important to them, important enough to factor in whether or not they move somewhere. Often when people are asking about moving to an area, they ask (or are offered information, occasionally unsolicited) about how good/bad the local restaurants are.

I don't understand why it's so important. In my mind, most meals are taken at home or brought from home; restaurants aren't in the picture often enough to matter, and workable fast food is everywhere. For a treat/non-cooking day, most grocery stores carry things that taste good. It makes me wonder how often these people eat out. Maybe they've been spoiled by many great past dining experiences and aren't satisfied with homemade or grocery-store delis/fast food? I mean, to me it's just food. I wouldn't drive to another city just for great tasting food, even if I could afford it. But everyone has more energy than I do.

In the linked thread, someone has become such a connoisseur, not simply of local food, but of the niche area of local Asian food, that she or he has posted a whole paragraph of which restaurants in which cities have the best of several Asian cuisines. It just kind of blows my mind that someone eats out enough to even know of that many restaurants in that many different cities, especially given that none of them seem to be fast food chains (with which pretty much everyone is familiar).

Considering how fat so many people are, there's something perverse about this foodie culture that's represented online.

As for driving to another city just for food, another weird thing about people in this area is that they seem comfortable with SHITLOADS of driving time. One of the frequently mentioned selling points of our area is access to many kinds of nature: beaches, mountains, lakes, forests. But none of these are nearby for most Bay Area residents, who live in the urban/suburban core of the area. They talk about, they recommend, visiting these places as if a two to three hour commute is no big deal.

When people ask questions about where to live when considering a new job in the area, commenters recommend living several towns away. Commuting long distances to work (in perennially moderately bad traffic) is an unfortunately common necessity here, but commuting seems waaayyyy too normalized in these people's minds. They should be steering away potential new commuters, not giving advice that's going to add to the traffic. Casually suggesting that people drive an hour to SF for the nightlife every weekend is another thing they do. I know that driving is way more draining for me because of autism, but damn, I cannot even imagine how desensitized these people seem to have become to it. Basically the whole package of activities and amenities they present as what makes the Bay Area attractive requires lots of driving, and I find that all the driving makes the Bay Area unattractive, when viewed as a whole.

It kind of blows my mind that people are accepting of the homelessness, the crime, the high cost of living, the population density, the inability to trust anyone, and on top of all that are willing to drive for a while just for a burrito or some ramen. People are just so different. Different from me.

What works for me here is the weather and the relative lack of racism. I'd consider moving some place less crowded and more scenic, but white-privileged people would make my life hell. I don't know enough about other areas of California to sidestep that, and asking online is a minefield because most of the posters are white themselves and A. passive-aggressive and assholish in their responses and/or B. hellbent on downplaying racism to the point of giving misleading or useless information. This is just another facet of their racism: caring so little about people potentially being racially victimized that they thwart our efforts to avoid the victimization.

Today I've been looking into applying for a second state job, but I think I'm going to give up now. Most of the available jobs require too much people-time; that is an automatic dealbreaker. A lot of them also list an insane amount of required knowledge and a shitload of various job duties for what's basically an entry-level job. I assume that I'd at least have a chance at some of them without the knowledge/experience, but I'd be at such a huge disadvantage compared to even slightly experienced applicants that applying seems rather pointless.

Of the few doable and interesting jobs I found, the latest one describes the working environment as "an enclosed, non-windowed office cubicle" that may include "Mandatory overtime, including evening and weekend work." That sounds depressing as hell, so I'm pretty much done with this shit. I'd rather be poor than rotting in some cubicle that doesn't even have a window, and full-time work is already too many hours. I don't know how most people survive full-time jobs.

All these jobs are very practical and practical shit is not my strong suit. But the non-practical, idea jobs are mostly in academia, and I couldn't hack that either.

I have stomach cramps again so my afternoon is kind of ruined. I could probably avoid the cramps if I pushed my first meal from noon to late morning, but I very much do not want to do that. I would have to reschedule my dinner and mid-day snack, to when, I don't know, so trial-and-error and possible excess hunger and low blood sugar in between would be required. My blood sugar still drops after dinner even though I've lightened my meal, so I'm going to try to lighten it even more. I stuffed myself at lunch today, with some dark chocolate, an extra twenty grams of oats, and an extra half ounce of walnuts, so I hope to not be very hungry come dinnertime.

Seems like I sleep for longer when my blood sugar drops at night. I think I got closer to my normal five hours of sleep last night, and the reader shows my blood sugar crashed two or three times during that period. It hasn't been crashing at all these past few nights I've been getting just three hours of sleep.

Entry tags:

fediverse,
tech

Static comments for static sites.

On using the fediverse to manage static site comments.

One of my todo list items is to implement something like this at alisfranklin.com, originally via PHP though it does kind of occur to me I could probably do it in JavaScript? I wrote some of that once. How hard can it be, right?

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Current Mood: optimistic
Current Location: United States

Returning to This Website

Name: Nix/Nyx or other names (they/them or any pronouns).

Age: 28.

I mostly post about: I'll probably post about my life the most consistently. I might also post writings and about my creative projects in general. Overall, I think I'll mainly use this blog/journal to process thoughts or ideas and to help me remember things, as I have a terrible memory. Maybe I'll post song lyrics and/or poetry I come up with, too.

My hobbies are: Making music, listening to music, gaming (I play a variety of games), reading (manga, graphic novels, articles, books, etc.), writing, streaming (I'm currently streaming as a VTuber), content creation, and more. I also recently started drawing again with digital art and go on the occasional hike.

My fandoms are: This is going to be embarrassing, but I'm not sure what counts as a "fandom." Maybe I'm overthinking the definition? Either way, I don't think I am a part of any specific fandoms right now, but that could change. Some things I like that I can think of right now are Okami (for nostalgia reasons) and Baldur's Gate 3.

I'm looking to meet people who: I'm mostly looking for more people around my age. It's a plus if you're also LGBTQIA+, disabled, or neurodivergent, and it's even better if we share interests.

My posting schedule tends to be: This time around (I used this website a while back), I'll probably post pretty sporadically overall. In the past, there were points where I almost posted daily, so that might happen again.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: I'm okay-ish with differing opinions as long as it's nothing too major, but that's probably a thin line I don't even fully understand yet. (I like keeping my mind open to new ideas if others will do the same.) However, I do draw the line at right-winged people and centrists. That's all I'm going to put for now. Oh, and please be at least 20 years old. Thank you.

Before adding me, you should know: I struggle with my mental and physical health and will probably post about that a lot. For similar reasons (mostly related to my energy levels and shyness), I also have a hard time commenting on posts, but I'm trying to overcome that. Responding to DMs can be even worse, even though I do appreciate messages from people.

Monday @ 3:13 pm

Crop of a post from my blog. Part of the post meta is circled in purple. It reads "69 views (nice)."

. . . I forgot I’d added that, lol.

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Entry tags:

music,
music monday

Music Monday

🎵 Igorrr, “Infestis“

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Current Mood: indescribable

Entry tags:

job,
racism

Another Racist Micro-Aggression

Yesterday started off nice: beautiful sunny day, good exercise with a nice long late-morning walk, and I was looking forward to arriving home and satisfying my hunger with a big lunch.

But there was a music festival. It's a small music festival that used to be right in our neighborhood, right on people's lawns and shit, but I and some other neighbors complained, so it had been moved to a nearby park. I was arriving home a bit late, just after noon; if I'd been on time, I would have missed the music, which started up at noon. I was walking through the park, past a small stage on which a guy was strumming a guitar, on my way to my apartment. I was yards away from the park exit. The guy started singing and just as I was passing the stage, he sang something about physical appearance that was specific to my ethnic background. This is a town full of white people, mind you, so these kinds of statements stand out; what he said could not have applied to just anyone in town or in the audience. And what he sang was not positive at all.

I had a large zucchini with me that I'd picked up from the curb in front of someone's house. (Lots of people in town have gardens and fruit trees and they give away the produce at this time of year.) I wished that I'd had some tomatoes to pelt at him. But I could have gotten arrested for that. I was taken by surprise. I felt targeted. There wasn't really anything I could do there so I continued on my way home. At first I'd thought maybe the incident had just been a coincidence. I felt worse as the reality of the situation sunk in. Even if it had been a coincidence, there is something wrong with this white guy having those sorts of lyrics at all. I had trouble focusing and making lunch, and I ended up eating rather late.

After lunch, I emailed one of the festival organizers, the same person I'd complained to before, and described the incident. No response so far. This will probably be swept under the rug, ignored even though there were a bunch of people there who heard the same thing I heard, even if the organizer does respond.

I think the stress contributed to my forgetting that the application window for the state job closes today. I needed to write a statement of qualifications for the application; I was supposed to finish it yesterday, but I didn't get around to it until just after eleven pm. I searched the Internet for news about racism in this town and ended up reading news articles and the town's sub-reddit for hours. I had trouble pulling myself away from the news articles, my reading quickly diverging from the original search to crime reports and international affairs.

Once I started working on the document, it occurred to me that I didn't know whether the application window would be closing at midnight, so I ended up rushing, and I didn't have the time to say everything I wanted to say in the SOQ, plus I didn't have the opportunity to format it according to the instructions. I couldn't even spellcheck it because this laptop runs so slowly. So maybe my chances of getting this job have been compromised.

My feelings concerning racism interfering with my employment prospects are indescribable. I'm too weary to be angry, too shocked to be sad. I'm just stressed out. There is an indistinct fog in my mind in place of specific emotions. It's like I cannot fully think about the enemy because I cannot see the enemy for the featureless walls the enemy has put up around me. We are not facing one another because I am stuck in a sort of locked room.

And my dreams of renting a house near the job have been crashed by the harsh reality that I'll probably face housing discrimination and harassment from my neighbors if I do manage to move in.

This is my life. Thanks to white-privileged people. Unbelievable.

I stayed home from my evening walk to finish writing and my hunger mounted until I ended up eating another meal.

After I'd submitted my job application, I took a closer look at the similar jobs that had been sent to me. Although they all share the same job title, the job duties differ significantly. The two similar jobs involved too much interfacing with other people, so I won't be applying for them, so now I have even less of a chance of being hired and escaping this town.

There's still a whole list of similar jobs for me to comb through, but I'm not confident that I'll find another one that's suitable. I'm not even confident that the one I applied for is suitable; the description of the job duties is rather vague. Since I'm skipping tonight's weightlifting workout and it's not yet dinnertime, I'll go through more of the list now. I just don't give a shit tonight. I had a good bench-press session yesterday evening, lifted seventy-one pounds, and I'm sort of satisfied enough with that to not do anything tonight, plus I lack energy. I'm still waking up after like three hours of sleep and the coffee and dark chocolate aren't working too well.

Monday @ 9:32 am

HIM: And every time I wear a white shirt I just end up spilling bolognese on it.

HER: Sunlight. The sun fixes tomato stains.

ME: You know what else fixes tomato stains? Black dye.

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Current Mood: busy
Current Location: New Digs

Entry tags:

Weekend updatery

Everything is back to semi-normal here (though there is some IRL fuckery going on that I'd rather not get into here on the blog just yet). The day job is the day job, the writing is the writing. Everything seems to be in a state of movement, which is always better than a state of stall, yeah? I'm back to almost forty hours at the day job again, and Theadia is coming along quite nicely.

Speaking of which, this current go-round is including my inserting a few [INSERT NEW SCENE/CHAPTER HERE] placeholders. There are a few secondary characters I never got around to expanding on who I think could be useful for the grander plot, so I'm giving the novel a bit of breathing room to give them a bit of stage time. I'm taking my time with this one, so if I don't quite get it out on schedule, I'm not going to worry. I really don't want to do this one half-assed.

OH! And speaking of writing, I finally got the rough POD ARC for A Division of Souls (the remaster), and it looks REALLY good! I'm quite glad Draft2Digital is providing this -- and via a much easier process than Amazon/Createspace, I should add -- so once I give it a final go-over (and fix any last-minute issues), I'll have it up and available to buy in print! Woo!

And following up on that, I've also prepped a new copy of The Persistence of Memories for remastering, which I definitely want to have out by 2026. I think this one will need a bit less polishing than ADoS did, but considering it's my favorite in the trilogy, I'd like to make sure it's also just as tight and up to current standards! More on that soon enough...

Entry tags:

Two Linux Reviews from a Blind Perspective

Hello, Dear Readers. Today, I have a technology entry for you. Let me begin with a bit of background. Most of you already know this, but for our current discussion, it's worth repeating. I am totally blind and always have been, which means that, when I use a computer, I always use a screen reader. I am also, first and foremost, a Windows and DOS user. My favourite versions of Windows are XP and 7, though I also grudgingly, and with annoyance, use 11. In all, I've been using computers for over twenty-five years, about thirty if I include the first family computer, before I got my own. In the last few years, I have tried several versions of Linux, but the only ones with which I've had any real degree of success have been Sonar and Vinux (the latter I just reinstalled today as a test). Debian also worked, but it was so complicated that it gave me a headache. Mostly, it was due to the problems mentioned in the Accessible Coconut section, so it was a Linux problem, not a Debian one, though the system itself is still more complicated than I would like as a new user. When a DOS lover says she hates the Linux commandline, there's a problem! But Linux has far more issues than just that. This, in fact, is hthe post that started me on my latest adventure. It was written as a reply to someone elses' post.

This is the original link. I'm not sure how to link to just my thread, but if you search for dandylover1, you'll find it.

https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/115195021196963096

"*sigh* I wish people would stop recommending Linux as the be all end all. It's not, especially for those of us who use screen readers. We have to learn an entirely new operating system with various interfaces (choosing a desktop is part of it)a, plus a new screen reader, plus new programs and ways of installing and updating them, and that's assuming that the distribution even has Orca enabled or that it can easily be enabled at startup without sighted assistance. Even for the sighted, many can't just install it and go, as they probably have new things to learn as well. Yes, it's a good option, but it's not the only one, and it isn't as if Windows 10 will suddenly stop working or a hacker will wipe these computers overnight. XP and 7 both still work and both have modern browsers (Supermium and Serpent UXP) to use with them, so 10 most certainly does as well."

During that conversation, someone recommended yet another version of Linux called Elementary Os. Unlike many, this is supposed to be easy to use and fully accessible. The creators are certainly kind enough, and they genuinely do seem to care about their users and immediately respond to problems. That much I will say. But sadly, I cannot recommend this system for someone new to Linux, as I will explain below. If you know what you're doing (I don't), it may be worth investigating and giving feedback from an expert's perspective. For the record, I am using a Toughpad FZ-M1 MK3 which has a Core i5-7Y57 processor and 8gb of ram. This is perfect for Windows 11 plus DOS, XP or 7, but Elementary OS requires at least 4gb of ram, more than any other version of Linux that I have used.

( Review of Elementary OS )

While testing and Reviewing Elementary OS, I decided to do the same with another Linux distribution, namely Accessible Coconut. This is actually designed for the blind, and as you will see, my experience with it couldn't be any more different. Yet even it has its problems, and mostly, they are related to Linux itself, not to this particular version.

( Review of Accessible Coconut )

Entry tags:

The fake past.

These videos are awful AI-generated slop, yes, but it’s more than that. Reactionary nostalgia, a desire to return to a fake past or a time when you were young and things were better, is part of why the world is so fucked right now. It is, literally, the basis of MAGA. Worse, these videos about the “past” tell us a lot about our present and future: one where AI encourages our worst impulses and allows users to escape from reality into a slopified world that narrowly targets whatever reality we’d like to burrow into without dealing with the problems of the present.

On Boomerfying the past.

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Current Mood: accomplished

Candy Jar Terrarium Part 2: Plants

This post covers planting the candy jar terrarium. Begin with Part 1: Setup.

( Read more... )

Current Mood: accomplished

Candy Jar Terrarium Part 1: Setup

Today I assembled the large candy jar terrarium. Continue with Part 2: Plants.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

capy.txt,
updates

"Various bitching about internet exoduses"

Various bitching about internet exoduses

I stopped linking to site updates, but this took a long time to write, so I might as well link to it. Be warned, it is not polished and venting, because I'm tired of having this conversation and seeing people finger wagging over how you're a bad person for still using Tumblr/Reddit/Bluesky etc. and not a less mainstream site. Also it's a mini online history lesson of the last 20 years online.

My three year retrospective is in progress. It's not going to be as personal or loaded, but I'm struggling really badly due to personal events that happened this year.

I spent last night running around a gayborhood drunk and at a lesbian bar, only to come home and see my feeds polluted with stupid bullshit politics and other social rejects. The internet is a lot less cool than my real life was 20 hours ago.

Entry tags:

uspol

The only obit needed.

If nothing else we can say [Charlie Kirk] died doing what he loved, which was being racist in front of an audience.

Rest in piss.

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Entry tags:

Why Has Critical Psychiatry Run Out of Steam?

Wars. So many wars. Diagnosis wars and medication wars. Wars against mental illness and wars against the mentally ill. Wars against psychopathology and wars out of psychopathology. Should we be at war, too, we, the intellectual critics of psychiatry? Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? More iconoclasm to iconoclasm? What has become of critical psychiatry? Has it run out of steam?

What has become of psychiatric critique, I wonder, when incompetent politicians, celebrity podcasters, snake-oil merchants, disgraced television hosts, and anti-vaxxers echo arguments scarcely different from those of academic critics? It does not seem to me that we have been as quick to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are we not like those mechanical toys that endlessly make the same gesture when everything else has changed around them?

A culture in the throes of conspiratorial thinking has set its sights on psychiatry, and this new world of discourse is a short step away from the respectable academics who call psychiatrists “shock doctors,” who compare the concept of mental illness to Santa Claus and think diagnoses are similar in validity to attributions of demonic possession, who think that psychiatric diagnoses are inherently stigmatizing and unscientific labels, that psychiatric medications are so ineffective and toxic that they cannot legitimately be called “treatments” and the best thing you can do is to avoid them and get off them, and that psychiatric interventions are backed by evidence that is comparable in scientific rigor to that for homeopathy. (IYKYK)

Do you see why I am worried? Those of us who intended to emancipate the public from prematurely naturalized objectified psychiatric facts, perhaps we were foolishly mistaken. We seem to be approaching a point where the real danger is no longer coming from an excessive confidence in ideological arguments posturing as matters of fact but from an excessive distrust of good matters of fact disguised as bad ideological biases.

It is about time we bring the sword of criticism to critical psychiatry itself and do a bit of soul-searching here: what were we really after when we were so intent on showing the social construction of psychiatric knowledge? There is no sure ground even for criticism. Isn’t this what criticism intended to say: that there is no sure ground anywhere? But what does it mean when this lack of sure ground is taken away from us by the worst possible fellows as an argument against the things we cherish?

Once, to show that diagnoses were constructed was to resist reification, to remind psychiatry of its entanglement with culture, politics, and values. Now, the same refrain is repurposed by movements that reject the reality of disability and ridicule professional attempts to alleviate suffering. The very tools of critique, once marshaled against premature certainty and biomedical hubris, are redeployed to erode trust in any psychiatric knowledge whatsoever. What has critical psychiatry become when its gestures of suspicion are indistinguishable from the paranoid accusations of medicine’s most fraudulent enemies?

( venting / personal. i don't expect most people to agree with this )

Sunday @ 1:07 am

uspol adjacent

Legit question though why is every twenty-something American dude called Tyler? Like what was in the water in the late 90s/early 2000s? Was it Fight Club? Were all these kids’ parents horny for Brad Pitt???

I know this sounds like a shitpost but no for real I swear this is a thing and I’ve found like at least three in the last few months, and now there’s not one but two in the news???

It’s like how every American Millennial dude is called Evan and every British one is called Oliver. I swear to god this is a thing and once you’ve seen it you can’t unsee it hello yes I am very tired why do you ask?

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Saturday @ 8:42 pm

Oh snap the random Pinterest jeans I ordered on a whim like three months ago finally arrived?

I admit I’d kind of assumed they weren’t going to, but . . . nope. They made it. And they’re way better than I was expecting? Good quality, heavy denim, good detailing. They’re probably a size bigger than I should’ve gotten but so it goes, definitely need hemming, and I will probably end up removing the inner thigh laces (pour one out for those of us with touching thighs, I guess). But. Yeah. Good purchase.

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